America Sucks

I'll start this piece by saying that I'm an American, I live here, and I do love and support my country. I'd love to see us return to a country that can lead the world again, with our innovation, strength and intelligence.

However, right now, we suck. I keep hearing people talk about "American Exceptionalism", as if it's a given, and if you don't support the idea, that you are somehow anti-American. Well I'm absolutely PRO-American, and I'm also claiming that, right now, we are in no POSITIVE way, exceptional.

I'd love for someone to explain to me what exactly we are exceptional at. I can list off the things that we are extremely ORDINARY at, and a few things we are exceptionally BAD at.

• Creating jobs--we stink. Asia's pulling out of recession. Brazil's survived, and is on the way up. We have more unemployment than the Europeans we had taken to making fun of for their high unemployment rates. And the jobs we create don't support a bustling economy that can grow and create further jobs.
• Fiscal policy--we're not just bad, we're brutal, bordering on Mexico and Zimbabwe-bad. Deficits out for decades. Manufacturing leaving in droves. No small business plans to stimulate real, competitive production in the US. Even our labor jobs are going to cheaper immigrants, legal and illegal. Our tax policy is misguided, our trade agreements are one-sided, our ability to pay off our debt is non-existent, and our day of reckoning with the US dollar, and our obligations to sovereign nations is practically upon us. Won't it be a real hoot when we're all scrambling to accumulate Mexican Pesos and Argentine dollars for their strength and stability?
• Education--"We're number 30! We're number 30!" Glad to see we have our priorities in order.
• Health Care--again, we spend twice what every other first world country does, and get half the care. We can't cover 1 out of 6 people. We're going broke, in both the public and private care spaces. I appreciate the Republican's putting out their health care plan, so I can finally dispel the claim that it's all the fault of litigation. Their efforts to curb such "frivolous lawsuits" would save us $41 Billion over the next 10 years (or about $4B a year), ignoring the unfunded liability of tens of TRILLIONS. Spare me the crap about our system being the best in the world. It isn't. Period. We may have had the best doctors 10 years ago, but to think we have the best here, now, is at best a tenuous argument. I don't have any imperical evidence to say we're the best, but plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that we are in many ways, LESS able to care for even the sickest patients than other countries. Anyone going through an illness (serious or not) in the past 5-6 years can tell you that the system just doesn't work. It's funny how I only hear us in America saying that these other health care systems are broken. I don't hear the French or the British, or the Germans saying that...
• Innovation--What happened to us? All the best stuff is made overseas. All the best American invented stuff is made overseas. What happened to all the green jobs? Stuff's all made in Germany and China. What happened to high-speed rail? We got a $5/week tax cut instead (which got eaten up by my $10/week increase in health care premium increases...). What about scientific breakthroughs? A more fuel-efficient car? "Smart Grids"? Do we know how to do ANYTHING in America anymore?
• Defense/Military--Actually, we do ONE thing better than everyone else. We have the best soldiers, and the best bombs. So we can scare the crap out of everyone. That being said, all the bombs in the world can't convince Afghanistan or Iraq to like us or respect us. Just ask Mikhael Gorbachev about Afghanistan. The best line I ever heard about the Afghan-Soviet war was the Soviet General who said that "we bombed Afghanistan UP TO the stone age", and still couldn't win. I'm all for just wars, but there are reasons the French, Germans, and Russians don't like to fight in wars. They've all had their Afghanistans in the last 80 years (French--Algeria, Germans--WWII, Russians--well, Afghanistan). They learned their lessons. We had Vietnam, but it seems that we didn't learn OUR lesson. Because, hey, we're exceptional, and those other countries can't achieve what we can. We can change the will of soverign nations through force, right? Because I can't point to a single instance of such an endeavour working throughout history...

I'm not writing this because I'm happy about all this. I think my favorite Football team, the Washington Redskins, suck too. I complain bitterly about them, their personnel, their desire, their management, etc. But in the end, I still root for them, and support them, with the hopes that this will finally be the week that they turn it around, and return to glory.

I'm not ready to move to Luxembourg. My point, however, is that until we face up to the fact that the world has caught up to us, and is passing us by, we'll never get back to being leaders in the world. The world used to look up to us. Now they see us as fat, out of shape, past our prime, prone to irrational decisions and possibly violence. Once the world realizes they don't need our dollars anymore to survive, we'll truly have to look in the mirror, and realize that to be considered exceptional, you have to BE exceptional.

That day is upon us.